Be My Winding Wheel
by littlehands
Summary: BooneShannon, Early S1. Boone pov, watching Shannon on the beach and thinking about her games.


**Be My Winding Wheel **/ Boone/Shannon / Early season 1

_So buy a pretty dress  
And wear it out tonight  
For all the boys you think could out do me  
Or better still be my winding wheel _

She wouldn't go all the way into the water, just enough to get her feet and long calves wet in the salt spray. Leans over, splashing the palm-fulls of water over her belly, dripping down her thighs. It's the way her bottoms just so slightly get tugged in, and he's back at the pool in the backyard watching her playing with him, the scent of chlorine is still haunting his mind.

She doesn't care that all the men - a lack of women seem to have survived - are looking at her. He knows, with some pride that this teasing water show is for him. She'd brush it off and flirt with Sawyer or Jack, maybe Charlie if she was in a bad mood (she knew how it made Clare feel). But this little show, this water game was all for him.

Other men would swelled with pride if the show was just for them - that's how she got them hooked on her - but it was all a tease. She started this game, that night with amber licks of fire on her tongue; now she was trying to pin him again. He wasn't gonna let her win, as much as he wanted to feel her under-on top-allover again, the island was too risky, the shunning would be horrible.

Not to mention the temptation never to stop, the idea of a clean slate, but he just wanted to dirty it again - couldn't avoid her. She couldn't run away, and he couldn't run after her. She was always running from something, but if you asked her, she was running to something - that elusive something that she hasn't yet found, but has been looking for ever since she hit fourteen.

They shared a tent type thing, big enough for them to have their own space, but somehow they always ended up sleeping close to the opening, the breezes rustling the plastic. She's stretch out at first but always end up in a ball against his back. He can feel her hair tickle his neck, it's comforting and then his body reacts.

He can't help it - wants to wash his hands of her but then she soften against him and it's square one - boy & girl.

She whimpers in her sleep, even though it's still warm on the beach, he wants to cover her with a blanket and watch the goose bumps go away. Part of it is because even after she fucked him over in Sydney, he is still her only link to some sort of family - that's what big brother's do, they watch over. Watched her fall from grace, stop being the coltish shy girl he remember at their parent's wedding to someone else when her father died - he knew that it was all an act.

She came crying after her first boyfriend dumped her, even if she played it cool at school, she wept into his pillow for days. Wasn't much he could say, not like he was good at these things - listening to his mother cry after his father came home smelling like another woman. He was 6, too young to really understand, but he knew in the pit of his belly that this was wrong, that love was love forever no matter how fucked up things got.

Love was love.

When the short skirts came out, the wild night on the town started; it was like she wasn't even his sister-stepsister anymore, there was a new girl that just made him burn inside. All the guys would want to come over to ogle her, he acted like it did matter, but it did. He could see her dying in front of him. The temptress, she left the girl behind - except with him under the cover of night.

She would revert and smile at his jokes. Clean face, open face; she would read in his bed, lying with the book on the pillow while he did his trig homework. Even if she has screamed and yelled just hours before, she'd come to him and with no words she would ask him for the silence that he always gave. She'd sometimes fall asleep on his bed, and even if he'd wake her, she'd just whisper - just let me stay here tonight. He always did, he couldn't refuse her.

She was right; he always loved her. But he didn't love the teasing flirting Shannon that had the men drooling, he love the woman who would tuck herself up in a chair and read for hours on end, wrapped up in a quilt on the porch of a beach house somewhere.

Now the picture he had flashing in his head is her pleading eyes and wet lips from that night, as much as he wanted to remember the girl that did crosswords and spent three hours on her hair; his head was flooded with her voice, telling him it was okay, then a spark. A spark that ignited something so deep, so compressed that once it was released they (him and her), they couldn't take it back.

He wouldn't - he'd confess it and be washed of the sin - but he wouldn't take the act back. If that dammed him, so be it - she looked at him and it was love. Love was love. A twisted love, but the closest he'd ever found.

She's in the water, his eyes are on her - the sun and the salt renews and burns clean.


End file.
